33 лучших юмористических рассказа на английском / 33 Best Humorous Short Stories

“Why should we want books when we have the men themselves to tell their tales to us? Would you give a rap to possess a set of Shakespeare if William himself would sit down and rattle off the whole business to you any time you chose to ask him to do it? Would you follow Scott’s printed narratives through their devious and tedious periods if Sir Walter in spirit would come to you on demand, and tell you all the old stories over again in a tenth part of the time it would take you to read the introduction to one of them?”

�“I fancy not,” I said.

�“I am,” said Hawley; “only personally I never send for Scott or Shakespeare. I prefer something lighter than either – Douglas Jerrold or Marryat. But best of all, I like to sit down and hear Noah swap animal stories with Davy Crockett. Noah’s the brightest man of his age in the club. Adam’s kind of slow.”

�“How about Solomon?” I asked, more to be flippant than with any desire for information. I was much amused to hear Hawley speak of these great spirits as if he and they were chums of long standing.

�“Solomon has resigned from the club,” he said, with a sad sigh. “He was a good fellow, Solomon was, but he thought he knew it all until old Doctor Johnson got hold of him, and then he knuckled under. It’s rather rough for a man to get firmly established in his belief that he is the wisest creature going, and then, after a couple of thousand years, have an Englishman come along and tell him things he never knew before, especially the way Sam Johnson delivers himself of his opinions.

�I wonder if Boswell was there?’ I ventured, interrupting 5010 in his extraordinary narrative for an instant.

�Yes, he was there,’ returned the prisoner. �I met him later in the evening; but he isn’t the spook he might be. He never had much spirit anyhow, and when he died he had to leave his nose behind him, and that settled him.

�Of course,’ I answered. �Boswell with no nose to stick into other people’s affairs would have been like Othello with Desdemona left out. But go on. What did you do next?’

�Well,’ 5010 resumed, �after I’d looked about me, and drunk my fill of the magnificence on every hand, Hawley took me into the music-room, and introduced me to Mozart and Wagner and a few other great composers.